STS200 : Transportation Unit II Spring 1996

II. Mid to Late Nineteenth Century America

The focus of this section will be the successful application of steam power primarily to railroads. Steam power was also successfully applied to water born shipping, and as a method of power actually lasted longer than steam power on the railroads. It should, however, be noted that in the same period, canal and animal drawn cartage provide additional transportation. The impact of canals declined dramatically by the 1850's, but some have operated well into the twentieth century. For example, the Erie Canal is still operational, and one, the Welland Canal, which brings ocean going vessels into the Great Lakes, was completed in the late 1950's. The economic impact of the anthracite canals declined as railroads grew, and many were taken over by the railroads in the 1850's as they fell on hard times. Carriage and horse roads grew widely during this same period as the population of the nation increased and where railroads didn't compete. The revolution in carriage power (internal combustion rather than horse or mule) must wait until nearly the turn of the century.

The Industrial Revolution is generally considered to have begun in Great Britain in the 18th Century. Deep mining of needed resources such as coal and tin was required. However, deep mines had a problem (one of many). They were prone to water seepage and thus flooding. The necessity of pumping the water out of the mines led to the development of stationary steam engines to power the pumps. The first successful steam engine for pumping mine water was developed by Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729) in 1712 near Dudley Castle, Staffordshire, England. Steam entered a chamber and lifted a piston. The chamber was closed off and the steam condensed allowing atmospheric pressure to push the piston down actuating the pump needed to drain the mines. It was superior to early attempts, but slowed by the necessity for allowing condensation to occur in the chamber. It was adapted to raising water to power water wheels, as well, thus increasing the availability of power to run the fledgling factories being built in England.

Newcomen was unable to patent his designs due to some general patents given Thomas Savery for inferior design steam engines that Newcomen improved upon. It remained for James Watt (1736-1819) to design an efficient steam engine that would be adaptable to locomotion. Watt originally improved upon the Newcomen engine during 1764 to 1768 by separating the condensing chamber from the expansion chamber which had the steam initially introduced to it. This overall improvement in efficiency was impressive, and after several years when Watt surveyed Scotland for canals, he was again called upon to work on his steam engines in 1774 in partnership with Matthew Boulton. Watt then undertook to design a double acting piston (steam pushed as well as pulled the piston), a method of changing the piston action to rotary action suitable for driving flywheels, etc., and devising a governor to control the speed of the engine. These patents and subsequent construction of his steam engines made Watt a wealthy man. However, he also spent much time and money defending his patents. Watt was lucky enough to retire at 65 and enjoy a period of retirement before his death.

Application of the Watt design to a successful railway occurred first in England in 1825 on the Stockton and Darlington, and by 1830 the Liverpool and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway operated with steam only service (no horse drawn carriages), and timetable operation. It is regarded as the first commercially successful railroad. George Stephenson and his son Robert Stephenson had designed the Rocket steam engine which inaugurated the service. Rail fever almost immediately gripped the United States. Actually articles as early as 1816 in the National Intelligencer advocated steam engines applied to rails, and the year before that a charter authorizing construction of a railroad was issued in New Jersey. The Delaware and Hudson Canal company applied steam locomotives to tramways to haul coal to the Delaware Canal in 1825. One is the famous Stourbridge Lion. These locomotives were primarily British imports. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was chartered in 1828 and by 1830 was operating 13 miles of track. By 1839 the Philadelphia and Reading railroad was hauling coal from the coal fields above Reading to Port Richmond in Philadelphia in direct competition with the Schuylkill Canal. By 1868 the nation was linked by a transcontinental railroad.

Click here to explore the history of the Union Pacific Railroad, one of the builders of the transcontinental railroad in 1868.

There were many technologies that had to be developed/improved to design a workable profitable railroad, even in the nineteenth century. This section will focus on only a few of them and some of their implications.

We have already seen that the need for reliable motive power was met by the Watt steam engine as modified by George and Robert Stephenson in England. The Stourbridge Lion was marginally successful and the John Bull was successful after it was modified with a lead truck. These are among the most famous early imports from England, but many other locomotives were too heavy for American rail, and it wasn't long before American locomotive companies were building steam engines for US railroads. These American locomotives were designed for poorer rail, worse operating conditions, steeper grades, and heavier loads than their British counterparts.

It should be noted that steam engines applied to ships, locomotives or stationary engines can explode if the water supply gets low enough. By 1838 the dangers were significant enough that the federal government started writing safety regulations in that year. There were other dangers that made steam locomotion controversial. The locomotives were dirty, sending ash everywhere, noisy, prone to scaring horses and other animals, and often emitted sparks that caused fires. In addition, those that made a living from turnpikes, draft animals, canals, or the supporting of those enterprises such as farming and tavern keepers that had a vested interest in opposing the "new" method of transportation. If it were not for the great transportation needs of the country, the steam locomotive may not have been as quickly accepted in the United States. Other forms of steam locomotion were not so lucky. In Britain restrictive laws and fees discouraged development and use of steam powered automobiles. In the U.S. the rough terrain did much the same, although steam powered farm tractors were successful as were steam powered road rollers.

Science (thermal physics) was studied by many well known physicists of the nineteenth century and laid the groundwork for the modern steam engine developed in the early twentieth century. Steam is an ideal material for an engine in several ways: water is plentiful, a gram of water occupies approximately one cubic centimeter in volume, but when converted to steam it occupies at least 1670 cubic centimeters of volume. The expansion is obviously large, and thus will do a great amount of work. That energy is very useful. We must acknowledge the contributions of James Joule (1818-1889) of England for helping develop an understanding of the nature of thermal energy, Sadi Carnot (1796-1832) for his theories of thermal engines, and William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, (1824-1907) for advancements in the understanding of heat and electricity among other fields. There were many other contributors, and the list is much longer than can be given here. Here the basic science explaining the technology would follow the invention of the technology, but it was now also necessary to understand the science for further advancement of the technology, since steam technology was more complex than previous transportation technologies.

Early steam railroads were built on rails similar to the horse drawn carriage railroads of the time. The carriages were modified stage coaches that now rode on flanged wheels, and the freight cars were similarly beefed up wagons. The advantage these smallish conveyances had over canals was not in carrying capacity, but in season of operation. The railroads can very likely be characterized as the first all weather transportation system. Unlike canals, drought and ice will not stop a train if the tracks can be kept clear. Thus, for example, coal could now be delivered from Reading to Philadelphia virtually all year long, not just during the time the canals were open. It was this economic advantage that signaled the end of canal fever and the bankruptcy of most American canals.

Wooden rails would be capped with sections of strap iron to provide an appropriately durable surface for the engine and carriages or freight cars to travel over. The difficulty here is that the engine was many times heavier than earlier conveyances, and would compress the iron (roll it like a rolling machine) into thinner strips which would expand and curl up. If you were riding in a passenger carriage on these railroads of the 1820's or 1830's you had to watch out that the floor of the carriage was not pierced by a "snakeheads" or curled piece of iron rail that had lifted up after being rolled by the considerable weight of the steam engine. Accidents involving the impaling of passengers was a danger. Obviously a stronger rail of a better design was needed even though some railroads still had strap iron construction as late as the Civil War. . In 1831 Robert L. Stevens of the Camden and Amboy railroad designed a "T-section" rail which he ordered for his railroad. The rail was made by rolling steel. By 1847 the state of New York was requiring this improved rail design.

Steel making was in its infancy, and steel was generally made by the "puddle" process where the molten iron was stirred to remove carbon and the slag was raked off. This process created a very poor grade of steel. But that steel could be rolled or forged Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) developed the Bessemer process for making steel in 1856 in England. It was the first inexpensive process of making quality steel. It was quickly applied to making superior quality rail for railroads, thus allowing heavier locomotives and cars to operate on the rails. The Bessemer process was not appropriate for phosphorous containing iron, and was unsuitable for iron mined on the Continent of Europe, so the process was supplanted by the Open Hearth Process developed by Karl Wilhem Siemens and Pierre and Emil Martin in the 1860's. This process allowed the slag which carried the impurities that the Bessemer process couldn't eliminated to float on the top and be removed from the steel. It wasn't until after WWII that the Bessemer process again became an important process for steel making by applying oxygen rather than air to the molten metal to oxidize the impurities. The study of metallurgy now became an important science in order to understand how to improve steel and other metals.

Other technologies that helped shape the nature or railways as we know them were those of communications and safety.

First, communications. As soon as you run more than one train on a single track you run the risk of collisions. The invention of the telegraph in 1837 by Cooke and Wheatstone, and the invention of the Morse code in the same year allowed for rapid communication over wires. Thus observers (station agents) could signal to other stations the locations of trains. Paper orders and a simple method of signaling such as the Ball signal (up for clear and down for stop) controlled traffic. The railroads quickly, and out of necessity, embraced such communications technologies.

Coupling and braking, both necessary for trains were overwhelming safety concerns of railroads in the nineteenth century, but were more slowly embraced by railroads because they did not represent a way to improve profits.

Connecting several carriages or freight wagons together requires some kind of technology. That technology was initially an short length of chain, soon to be replaced by a single link placed into a receiver at the end of the car and secured with a vertical pin. The link so attached to one car was then attached to a second car to couple the cars. This technology although made stronger as cars got heavier and engines larger survived until 1900 when it was finally outlawed. It required a railroad worker to be between the cars and somehow signal the engineman to move the cars close enough while holding the link in position to slide into the receiver of the car being coupled. A difficult task as cars became larger and visual contact between the railroaders was lost. Loss of fingers might be considered a minor accident considering many were indeed crushed to death in coupling mishaps. Even the last year that link and pin couplers were allowed, 300 deaths due to coupling accidents nationwide were recorded. The Pennsylvania Railroad Museum has on record a yard master's criteria for hiring rail workers. Those with experience usually had one or more fingers missing, and were considered good risks since they were likely to avoid future accidents. These were the top candidates for the job.

This example of the link and pin coupler is a display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania at Strasburg. Look for it in the photographs of the Civil War era wood burner and combination coach below which are also on display at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum in Strasburg.

   

In the latter part of the 1880's, the knuckle coupler was invented. This semi-automatic device locked upon the cars closing together without the rail worker getting between the cars. Furthermore, a lever at the corner of the car would release the coupler knuckle making uncoupling also safer. The cost of adding this safety improvement to the railroads was not widely accepted, and it took federal action by the newly formed Interstate Commerce Commission to outlaw the link and pin coupler by Jan 1, 1900.

Stopping a train was also a risky and dangerous business. It soon became obvious that these very heavy conveyances would need brakes on every car. But the brakes were only for that car and not linked throughout the train. A brakeman's job was to set the brakes on every car while the engineer braked the locomotive to stop the train. For about 50 years this meant moving from car to car to do the job. If you worked on a passenger train you could walk through the interior of each coach. This was dangerous enough with open platforms between the passenger coaches and gaps between the cars, but freight cars were worse. Brakemen would be required to move along the roofs of the cars on roof walks made of wood in all kinds of weather. Rain and ice made the roof walks slippery, tunnels and other low clearances could knock you off the car, but the only way to stop the train was to set the brakes. Beginning in 1868, George Westinghouse developed a series of devices which caused greater efficiency in stopping passenger trains. The air brake design was at first a poor substitute for the then current system, until a system for storing and using compressed air from a reservoir was devised. Thus with the invention of the triple valve, the Westinghouse air brake system allowed for greater safety to passenger travel. It took another twenty years and the efforts of an organization called the Master Car Builders Association to bring about the installation of a further improved air brake system for freight trains.

Passenger travel was still by "coach" with first coaches resembling modified stage coaches. The necessity for frequent stops for the comfort of the passengers as well as to provide water and fuel to the engines led to frequent stations along a rail line. Although travel might be at 30 mph or more, there still was the necessity to stop to eat. The first crude sleeping cars were put into service in the 1830's, but it was George Pullman that brought civility to travel at night with his sleeping cars starting in 1864. Further refinements made travel by Pullman car quite desireable by the turn of the century.

Stations were also locations where a hotel or tavern might also be constructed for the more refined to travel. Fred Harvey was such an entrepreneur. He built restaurants that established the reputation for serving good food at low prices along the Santa Fe railroad in the 1870's and later. He hired young women "18 to 30 and of good character" to work in these establishments. They were to verbally promise to work for one year or forfeit their pay. In practice few lasted more than six months before marrying and beginning to raise a family in the perennially woman short western United States. Fred Harvey, in fact, knew that his employees would remain only a short time and was, in fact, quite benevolent toward them.

Of course no discussion of this era would be complete without mentioning the "Robber Barons" and the abuses that led to the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission and close regulation of the railroads in the United States. The railroads and their presidents in the latter part of the nineteenth century had a virtual monopoly on transportation in the United States. They set prices for freight haulage, decided where rails would be laid, and ultimately set passenger ticket prices. Although the final act that set in motion regulation in the United States was the practice of charging a passenger more for a short trip than a long one, the greater hardship was in price gouging to ship goods. In 1887, Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission to stop these abuses. The ICC regulated shipping rates, safety and many other business operations of the railroads, even to the point of approving decisions to merger or abandon rail lines. The ultimate power of the ICC was so broad, that by the 1970's the over regulation of the railroads almost drove them all to bankruptcy since they could not compete in setting shipping rates to compete with alternate forms of shipping. The ICC closed its offices by act of Congress on Jan 1, 1996.

These photos are of the narrow guage East Broad Top tourist trains and represent designs of the Victorian era (about 1890).

By the 1890's railroads were an important facet of most American's lives. Travel from New York City to Chicago could be accomplished in about 36 hours with speeds across the midwest exceeding 100 mph. The arrival of a train in small towns was a major social event as information about the outside world, mail and goods arrived by rail. The railroad was indeed a centerpiece in the unification of the continent.

The top picture is a representation of a small town station of the late nineteenth century and the steam engine is a Pennyslvania Railroad Atlantic of the type that set a speed record in excess of 120 mph with its passenger train en route to Chicago about the turn of the century. Both pictures are of displays at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania at Strasburg.

References

Assignment: Provide an example from the historical era discussed here that demonstrates one of the 6 issues related to STS. See Student Activities.

Next: Transportation Unit #3